Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Continuing the debate on the two-state vs. the one-state ideas, I asked Henry Norr for permission to cross-post his terrific analysis that was first published on Mondoweiss on Sept. 18.

Norr is a retired journalist and longtime activist. He has written widely on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and over the last decade he has spent a total of six months volunteering in various capacities in the occupied Palestinian territories, most recently two months in Hebron. In 2011 he was a passenger on "The Audacity of Hope," the U.S. boat in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that planned to run the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Here is Norr's analysis:

Every week this year seems to bring some new obituary for the two-state solution. Both in Israel and in the U.S., more and more politicians on the right (the Netanyahu-appointed Levy Committee in Israel; settler spokesman Dani Dayan in the New York Times; the legislatures of Florida and South Carolina; even, apparently, the Republican National Committee) have been coming forward to acknowledge what many on the left have argued for years: there’s only one state between the river and the sea, and there’s no realistic prospect of that changing.

From a different perspective, several prominent long-time champions of the two-state approach have joined the chorus just in the last couple of weeks: Nahum Barnea, widely described as “the dean of Israeli columnists;” Henry Siegman, the former Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress; and Richard Silverstein, the well-known Tikun Olam blogger, who titled his post "Two States Are Dead, Long Live the New State!" Meanwhile, the brightest lights on the left are increasingly focused on mapping out what a one-state solution might look like.

I hesitate to disagree with such a diverse array of pols and pundits, but I don’t buy it. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence that a two-state outcome - of sorts - remains very much in the cards: I think it’s almost certainly what Netanyahu et al. are planning, if not for the immediate future then for some opportune moment down the road.

In fact, I believe those announcing the demise of the two-state solution are inadvertently sowing an illusion that could be damaging to the movement for Palestinian rights.

On one level, of course, I agree completely: the kind of two-state solution liberal Americans, Israeli left Zionists, and Palestinian Authority loyalists have long imagined (and right-wing Zionists have feared) - that is, a state with at least many of the attributes of sovereignty along something close to the 1967 borders - is dead. But that’s nothing new: the whole idea was probably stillborn at Oslo, but if there was ever a possibility it would come to life, that chance ended years ago, as the settler population swelled into the hundreds of thousands, successive Israeli governments kept building out the infrastructure to support them, and Israelis of all stripes realized that no one - not the U.S., not the U.N., not the E.U., and not the Arab states - was actually prepared to do anything to impose the two-state “international consensus” they all talked about.

The only thing that’s changed in recent years is that liberals and moderates are finally shedding their blinders, and the right is emboldened to say openly what it always sought privately.

But to acknowledge that one idealized version of the two-state solution is dead doesn’t necessarily mean that other versions of it aren’t possible. It certainly doesn’t mean, as many of the recent obits imply, that the only issue before us now is the nature of the single state - i.e., will Israel continue denying any real legal and political rights to the Palestinians of the West Bank, even if it formally annexes their land? Will it devise some new form of limited pseudo-citizenship for them? Or will it finally fulfill the fantasies of the farthest-right (expelling the whole Palestinian population) or the dreams of many of us on the left (granting them full and equal rights)?

Each of these alternatives strikes me as completely implausible. After all, although the Zionists have always sought to control all of “Greater Israel,” their elite has also been guided from the beginning by another principle: not just maximizing their territory, but minimizing the number of Palestinians on it, in order to ensure Jewish control. If they had their druthers, most Israelis would no doubt opt for complete ethnic cleansing (a.k.a. “transfer”); the only reason it hasn't happened is that their leaders haven’t been confident the world would let them get away with it, especially in view of the resistance the Palestinians would likely put up. That remains the case today, I believe. (Of course, in the event of all-out, sustained regional war, all bets would be off...)

But as long as transfer is off the table and millions of Palestinians remain on their land, the Zionist leadership has consistently chosen not to incorporate all of it into their state: That’s why Ben Gurion didn’t push to “finish the job” in 1948, and why Israel didn’t annex all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after the 1967 war. That’s why Sharon pulled back from Gaza in 2005. And that’s why I can’t see complete annexation of the West Bank now.

What seems much more likely is that the Israelis will seek to preserve the status quo as long as possible, while they keep expanding the settlements and quietly driving out as many Palestinians as they can (mainly by making their lives miserable and hopeless) - all the while blathering about the need for negotiations. Is there any reason to think that Washington and the Europeans wouldn’t let them get away with this little game, just as they have for so many decades?

And if at some point, from somewhere, there did arise real pressure to resolve the issue - or if the Israelis succeed in so demoralizing the Palestinian population and corrupting its leadership that they can impose the terms they want - I’m convinced they’ll actually implement a two-state “solution.”

It just won’t look anything like what the peace processors have pretended to discuss for the last 20 years. Forget the 1967 borders - Israel will annex the majority of the West Bank. What they'll leave for the new state is an archipelago of minuscule fragments, including the main Palestinian population centers, all cut off from one another and surrounded by what will become officially Israeli territory.

Specifically, in terms of the supposedly short-term administrative divisions originally laid out in the “Oslo II Agreement” between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1995, count on Israel to formalize its currently de facto but complete control of Area C, which represents 62 percent of the West Bank’s land area. It includes all the settlements, the buffer zones around them, the Israeli highways, the IDF bases and “firing zones,” and the entire Jordan Valley except the city of Jericho. (See this factsheet from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and especially the European Union report "Area C and Palestinian State Building," released early this year, though dated last July).

The real beauty of Area C, from the Zionist perspective, is that swallowing it up, even without further ethnic cleansing, would increase the state’s non-Jewish population only modestly: after decades of decline, its Palestinian population is down to somewhere between 92,000 and 150,000 people, depending on whose estimate you believe - not much more than 5 percent of the West Bank total. Thanks to a systematic and amply documented Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing[1], the Jordan Valley in particular has been almost completely depopulated of Palestinians: in 1967 it was home to between 200,000 and 300,000 people, but now the total, not counting at least 9,400 Jewish settlers, has dropped to 56,000, of whom 70 percent live in Jericho (Area A), according to the EU.

To top it off, the Israelis might also grab some choice bits of Area B, where Jewish settlers have recently begun, for the first time, to set up settlement outposts. But it’s hard to imagine them taking it all: it’s only 20 percent of the West Bank, but nearly a million Palestinians (41 percent of the West Bank Palestinian population) live in the villages and towns it encompasses. It's no secret that Israeli Jews are already obsessed with the “demographic timebomb” represented by the roughly 1.5 million Palestinian citizens inside the Green Line - would they really want to add another million, just in order to achieve formal control of such a modest area?

And as to Area A - 14 separate fragments encompassing all the major Palestinian cities on the West Bank - only fanatics determined to control every inch of Eretz Yisrael, regardless of the consequences for the Zionist project, would want that incorporated into the state as long as its Palestinian population remains. After all, it’s only about 18 percent of the West Bank - about 4 percent of the area of Mandatory Palestine - but it's home to roughly 1.3 million Palestinians, which means that swallowing it up would nearly double Israel’s Palestinian population, even without counting the Area B population.

Few if any of those proclaiming the death of the two-state solution argue that Israel is ready to grant full citizenship to the 2.3 million Palestinians of Areas A and B. When they talk about a single state, they’re assuming, at least implicitly, that Israel will continue to deny the population the right to vote and other civil and legal rights. But if Israel were to formally annex the whole area while continuing to deny citizenship to the natives, the state and its defenders in Europe and North America would face even more difficulty than they do today in trying to refute the charge of apartheid. At that point, it would almost certainly face an accelerating loss of liberal support and renewed condemnation from most of the world, and the size and power of the already growing BDS - boycott, divestment, and sanctions - movement would swell, perhaps finally approaching the proportions of the movement against South African apartheid in the 1980s.

Why would the Zionists risk all that, when they have alternatives? Why won’t they just stretch out the status quo as long as possible? And then, if they have no other choice, they can resort to their own version of the two-state solution: either unilaterally or in conjunction with a quisling Palestinian leadership, they could simply annex Area C (and whatever parts of Area B they want) and declare the remaining fragments of the West Bank to be the Palestinian state. Undoubtedly, the Israelis would insist on demilitarization and a variety of other limitations on the sovereignty of this Palestinian entity, but they could still call it a state.

In fact, Bibi Netanyahu and his cronies have long hinted at such a “solution.” In 1996, when he was first elected prime minister, he promised to implement the Oslo agreement, but compared the kind of entity he had in mind for the Palestinians to either a territory with the right to hold a referendum on sovereignty, like Puerto Rico, or a demilitarized state like Andorra. When David Bar-Illan, then director of communications and policy planning in Netanyahu’s office, was asked about statehood, he answered “Semantics don’t matter. If Palestinian sovereignty is limited enough so that we feel safe, call it fried chicken.” And just last year, when Moshe Ya’alon, Netanyahu’s deputy prime minister and minister of strategic affairs, was asked to explain his thinking about a Palestinian state, he put it even more clearly: “Our intention is to leave the situation as it is: autonomous management of civil affairs, and if they want to call it a state, let them call it that. If they want to call it an empire, by all means. We intend to keep what exists now and let them call it whatever they want.”

This scenario sounds somewhat like what the South African whites tried to do in the apartheid era by setting up black bantustans. Of course, they didn’t get away with it, but there’s another precedent where similar plans succeeded (from the occupier’s perspective): right here in the U.S.A., Israel’s prime supporter and role model, federally recognized tribes are nominally sovereign nations. Indeed, the “Navajo Nation” is larger than West Virginia. (The comparison to apartheid South Africa probably has more resonance with contemporary Americans, but I’ve always thought the closest analogy to the Palestinian situation was the white man's treatment of native Americans.)

Some astute observers of Israeli politics have been predicting the annexation of Area C - Jeff Halper has repeatedly warned about this possibility (see, for example, Frank Barat’s interview with him in Al Jazeera in May), and just last month Israeli historian Ron Pundak, who helped negotiate the Oslo agreement and later the Geneva Initiative, laid it out very clearly in a Haaretz column entitled “Decoding Bibi’s West Bank Agenda.” My impression, though, is that this very plausible scenario is getting lost in the rising tide of rhetoric about the death of two-state solution and the not-very-likely prospect of a single state.

Does it matter? I think so, insofar as the progressive community can still hope to have some effect on what happens in the Middle East. Consider this scenario: suppose Netanyahu (or a successor) goes to the UN (probably not this year - he’s too preoccupied with Iran - but maybe next year, especially if Romney wins) and boldly declares that it's time to end a stalemate that has gone on long enough. Since the Palestinians can’t get themselves together and won’t negotiate, he’ll announce, Israel is going to settle the conflict once and for all by recognizing a Palestinian state. That state will encompass, basically, Areas A and B; simultaneously, Israel will set setting borders for itself that include Area C.

Instead of recognizing this maneuver as the grotesque landgrab it really would be, Washington (whoever’s in charge) and most of the media would undoubtedly hail him for his “boldness,” “courage,” “vision,” and “fairness.” They’ll declare his plan a “magnanimous compromise,” “the fulfillment of the long-held dream of a two states living side-by-side in peace and prosperity,” blah blah blah.

How the Palestinians would react, I certainly can’t say. Let’s hope they could overcome their current divisions and apparent exhaustion and rise up with sufficient numbers, militancy, and creativity to make the world recognize that this kind of “two-state solution” is no solution at all.

But whatever the Palestinians do, they’ll need help from supporters abroad, especially in the U.S., who can expose the Israeli ploy as a farce and a fraud. And if we’re going to play that role, we’d better be prepared for what’s really in the cards, instead of wasting our time either wringing our hands or celebrating over the supposed demise of the two-state solution.

[1] The ethnic cleansing of the Jordan Valley began in June 1967, when Israeli forces razed numerous villages and camps housing 1948 refugees, driving out perhaps as much as 88 percent of the population - even though no major military battles were fought in the area. Since then, Israel has worked quietly but relentlessly to finish the job, first by preventing the return of refugees (and routinely shooting those who tried), then by establishing a variety of policies and practices designed to deny the remaining Palestinians any prospect of a decent life. Among the techniques employed to this end: land theft (for settlements, “military zones,” and “nature preserves”); physical harassment by settlers and soldiers; home demolitions (40 percent of all the structures Israel demolished in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in 2011 were in this sparsely populated area); planning restrictions and denial of permits for even the most modest construction (out of 440 permit applications in 2010, the latest data available, four were granted); destruction of foreign-aided development projects (including European-funded solar panels); theft and murder of animals; and, perhaps most egregiously, a variety of policies that limit Palestinian access to water - deliberate destruction of Palestinian cisterns, denial of pipeline service by the Israel water company, outrageous pricing of water from other sources, and drilling wells much deeper than the Palestinians’, so the latter run dry as the water table is depleted to fill settlers’ swimming pools and nourish their export crops.

Although the Jordan Valley commands little attention in the West, it must be the best documented case of ethnic cleansing in human history. Good recent overviews include “The Forcible Transfer of the Palestinian People from the Jordan Valley,” by Al-Haq legal researcher Mercedes Melon; a report and interactive feature from B’Tselem, entitled “Dispossession and Exploitation: Israel's Policy in the Jordan Valley and Northern Dead Sea” ; and a beautifully illustrated report from the Ma’an Development Center called “Parallel Realities,” comparing the lives of Palestinian residents and Jewish settlers in the Jordan Valley. See also the website of Jordan Valley Solidarity, a network of Palestinian grassroots community groups and international supporters, and two excellent documentary films, the LifeSource collective’s “Jordan Valley Blues” (2010) and Al Jazeera’s superb “Last Shepherds of the Valley,” aired and posted just last month.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

No serious observer doubts that a two-state settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is currently all but dead, thanks to the continuing Israeli occupation, repression, settler expansion, and creeping ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. An increasing number of activists and academic specialists on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict regard this process as irreversible. Consequently, many now advocate a “one-state settlement,” meaning the creation of a binational democracy in all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, with equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity: the democratic republic of “Isratine,” as some have called it.

I have been very skeptical of both the feasibility and desirability of such a single binational state: I can’t imagine circumstances in which Israel will agree to it, I don’t think it is likely to be a democracy, and I think it is more likely to exacerbate the Jewish-Palestinian conflict than to end it. (I develop the argument at length in a forthcoming article in the journal Political Science Quarterly, entitled “Zionism, the Jewish State Issue, and an Israeli-Palestinian Settlement.”)

In the last few days I’ve had several email exchanges with three leading scholars of the conflict who believe that a one-state outcome is nearly inevitable--Steve Walt, John Mearsheimer, and Yousef Munayyer, the Palestinian-American scholar and activist who heads the Palestine Center in Washington. I think this debate will be of interest to many readers, so I have received permission from Steve, John, and Yousef to publish the most important parts of our email exchanges.

I began the exchanges by writing the following comment:

There is no serious doubt that the only reason that there hasn't been a two-state settlement along the well-understood lines has been Israeli intransigence--i.e. not that of the Palestinians, including Hamas. It is probably true that the two-state settlement is all but dead because of that intransigence. However, the argument that the one-state position must address is this: every factor that accounts for Israeli intransigence on a two-state solution makes a democratic one-state solution, with a probable Palestinian majority, doubly hard to imagine. And if, by some miracle, Israeli attitudes should somehow change, that would make a two-state settlement attainable long before it could make a one-state settlement possible. What, exactly, is the counterargument to this assessment?

Walt responded:

I believe the main argument would run like this: even if Israeli attitudes were to change in the next decade or so, the two populations are by now sufficiently intermingled that it would be impossible—as a practical matter--to disentangle them. The Palestinians will eventually shift from demanding independent statehood to demanding political rights within Israel, which Israeli Jews will resist at first (and for awhile). They will eventually be forced to accommodate these demands, however, because the alternatives (ethnic cleansing or permanent apartheid) will be untenable globally [emphasis added]. This doesn't make a one-state solution easy to implement at all, it just means that we'll end up with a not very functional single state.

I'm not saying this WILL happen, only that this is the basic logic that those forecasting one state seem to have in mind.

I responded:

Perhaps. On the other hand, "untenable globally" in this context seems to mean morally and politically untenable in the eyes of the international "community." The problem is that the Israeli occupation and repression of the Palestinians already has been morally and politically anathema (untenable) for many years now, with not the slightest impact on Israel or the U.S., which is the only member of the international community that counts for anything in Israeli eyes. So, if you are right that's the logic of the one-staters, they have a mighty thin reed to lean on. For that reason, I still think the best strategy is serious pressure on Israel to agree to a two-state settlement---and, moreover, a two-state settlement is likely to be far more stable and less utopian than one state. Put differently, sustained pressure on Israel is the only hope; as remote as the possibility that such U.S. pressures will materialize, the possibility that even serious and sustained pressures would force Israel to agree to anything resembling a one-state democracy with equal rights for the Palestinians is, for all practical purposes, unimaginable.

Similarly, Munayyer has argued that if the Palestinians give up the chimera of the creation of an independent state in the occupied territories, Israel will be forced to agree to a binational state. In our exchange, he put it this way:

If the two state outcome is exposed for fantasy, and Palestinians en masse demand civil rights, it is hard to see a sustained, western objection. This will force Israeli decision makers to do the math; what costs them more power sharing or relinquishing the land? It is hard math to do, in part because the cost of power sharing is much harder to determine when new political realities will create a completely different political landscape from which coalitions are formed. Yet, with every passing day, the cost of relinquishing the land continues to increase.

Joining in these exchanges, Mearsheimer wrote the following:

I think the main problem with your argument is that there is no way the US is going to put serious pressure on Israel to accept a two-state solution. Obama tried and failed miserably; it wasn't even close.

I might add that to create a viable Palestinian state would require us to put enormous pressure on Israel, because we would have to reverse so many facts on the ground and because the hardliners are so powerful in Israel. In my opinion, there is no chance this is going to happen. We now have and will continue to have for the foreseeable future a Greater Israel.

And by the way, as time goes by, it will become even more difficult to move toward a two-state solution as the settlement enterprise will grow even larger.

On the one-state solution, I think there is no question that Israeli Jews will mightily resist democracy inside Greater Israel. That situation will cause all sorts of problems for the Israelis and give them powerful incentives to expel the Palestinians. I worry a lot about that outcome and hope that the Palestinians have the good sense not to play into Israel's hands.

You think there is a good chance that Greater Israel can maintain itself for the foreseeable future, even if it is not a democracy and is indeed an apartheid state. After all, they have been able to maintain the occupation all these years. You may be right; one does marvel at how Israel has been able to avoid serious sanctions for its past behavior toward the Palestinians.

Still, I think you are wrong. The world has changed and is changing in ways that will make it impossible over the long term to maintain an Israel that is an apartheid state, and here I am talking the next thirty or so years. Very briefly, here are my reasons.

1. Israel has benefitted greatly from the illusion that there will be a two-state solution; that will soon be over.

2. Greater Israel will be (is) an apartheid state and that will be hard to miss and very difficult to defend -- I would argue impossible over the long term.

3. The face of Israel is undergoing a fundamental transformation with the steady drift to the right, the growing racism, and the growing numbers of ultra-orthodox. That, coupled with apartheid, will make it hard for Israel to sell itself as a "Western society," as it has done so well in the past.

4. The internet makes it almost impossible to miss what is going on in Israel.

5. Israel’s “new historians” have made it clear what the Israelis have done and are doing to the Palestinians and that has generated a huge amount of sympathy for the Palestinians around the world. Israel in the past was very adept at selling itself as the victim. Now they look like brutal victimizers and the Palestinians look like the victims.

6. The lobby is powerful, but it now has to operate out in the open and engage in smash-mouth politics. That is not good; as Steve Rosen said, "A lobby is like a night flower; it thrives in the dark and dies in the sun."

7. The American Jewish community is hardly monolithic and it contains a substantial number of people who are deeply critical of Israeli behavior and willing to voice their opinions. I believe those numbers will grow over time; Peter Beinart is a harbinger of things to come.

8. The Holocaust is receding into history and it will become increasingly difficult for Israel and its supporters to invoke that horrific tragedy to provide Israel with cover.

9. Elites in the Arab and Islamic world are becoming more Westernized and are much better able to engage in politics in the West than they were in the past.

10. The Arab world is likely to become more democratic and more educated over time and that is likely to make countries in the Middle East more critical of Israel. This is what is now happening in Egypt.

11. There is an important precedent that many will point to so as to delegitimize Greater Israel and make the case for turning it into a real democracy: South Africa.

For all these reasons, I don't think it will be possible for Greater Israel to maintain itself as an apartheid state over the long term. Again, this is why I am fearful that Israel will pursue expulsion. Of course, I may be wrong about all this, but I don't think so.”

I responded:

I don't think we disagree any of the most important facts; indeed, in some ways my views are bleaker than yours, at least in terms of their implications in the next few years. As for what may occur over the next thirty years, who knows? My gut feeling is that the longer the occupation goes on, the more and more irreversible it will become. I also agree that in the current circumstances there is no possibility of serious U.S. pressure. Still, my view is that the best strategy over the longer run is not to abandon the two-state idea but to work to change US immobilism and complicity with Israel on this issue. A very long shot, to be sure, but more imaginable to me than a one-state “solution.” Regarding your specific points: 1. I'm not sure there are any knowledgable observers, or governments, that still have illusions about Israel's torpedoing of the two-state solution. The dispelling of those illusions, however, hasn't stopped Israel from continuing on its present course. 2. For those interested in the obvious facts--to be sure, a very large caveat--Israeli behavior is already not merely very difficult but impossible to defend. Yet, it not only continues, but worsens.

3. I agree with your portrayal of what Israel is becoming, or already has become. I guess where I differ is my pessimism that Israel will be forced to change course simply because it will be increasingly difficult for it to sell itself as a “Western society.” 4. The internet has already had the effect—or should have had the effect-- of making it impossible to ignore what has happened to Israel. Query: can anyone think of any other long-standing and highly visible conflict in which incontrovertible facts have mattered so little? 5. The work of the new historians goes back at least thirty years, proving not merely that the Israelis look like brutal victimizers and the Palestinians look like victims--but that the perceptions are true. But the beat goes on. 6. In light of recent events, hard to see how the lobby has been hurt much by its need to operate in the open--to the extent that it has, that is. 7. It’s very hard for me to be optimistic that the growing minority of American Jewish dissenters have had, or will have, much impact on the U.S. or Israeli policy-making process. Maybe Peter Beinart is a harbinger of things to come. On the other hand, maybe the behavior of Obama, Romney and the Congress is a greater harbinger of things to remain the same.

8. I agree that “it will become increasingly difficult for Israel and its supporters to invoke that horrific tragedy to provide Israel with cover.” However, that has long been obvious….

9 &10. It’s too soon to know if the pro-democratic and moderate Arab elites as well as public opinion will prevail. Recent events suggest that the possibility that the Arab spring may yet turn into another—if different--Arab winter.

11. I agree that the South Africa precedent is a powerful and hopeful one. Still, I’m less optimistic than you that Israel will see it that way: the general Israeli reaction has not been to recoil in horror at the face in the mirror and reach the obvious conclusions, but to retreat further into defiance and a perverse belief that they are the victims.

I would love to believe that Steve, John, and Yousef are right in their basic analysis: that the growing international (and some Jewish) horror at Israel's policies will force the Israelis to confront their behavior, which will lead to positive change. I just don't see it that way--on the contrary, nearly all the trends in Israeli society are going in the opposite direction. (For a powerful statement of how an Israeli Jewish liberal sees it, see this: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-final-moment-before-the-liberal-population-leaves-israel.premium-1.465231). Should these trends continue, we'll soon be worrying about how civil rights/civil liberties/genuine democracy can be preserved for liberal Israeli Jews, let alone expanded to include the Palestinians.

I can't resist adding this observation: It is really interesting--indeed, heartwarming--that the most optimistic assessments of how the Israelis might be forced to reevaluate their present catastrophic course seems to be coming from the non-Jewish observers: John, Steve, Yousef, and others. Perhaps my pessimism is partially explained by the fact that, as a Jew and liberal Zionist, I am outraged by Israel's betrayal (and the American Jewish cover-my-eyes-cover-my-ears-cover-my-nose-I-don't-want-to-know complicity in that betrayal) of so much of what was worthwhile in the Jewish tradition. I fervently hope that they are right, and we can yet be saved from ourselves.

In the meantime, let me reiterate my main point: the burden of proof is on those who see the one-state solution as inevitable and/or desirable: as I see it, every obstacle to the attainment of a two-state settlement makes a one-state settlement inconceivable. How do one-state proponents propose to deal with all the obvious problems of feasibility and desirability? And if the argument is that under certain assumptions in the long run these problems can be resolved, then why can't the obstacles to a two-state solution, under similar but not quite so daunting assumptions, also be resolved over the longer run?

Put differently, the necessary changes in the Israeli beliefs, attitudes and policies that would make possible a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would allow for the creation of an independent and viable Palestinian state long before they would allow for the creation of the binational democracy of Isratine

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Today's New York Times features an oped by someone calling himself "Haim Saban"--clearly a pseudonym--entitled "The Truth About Obama and Israel." At first glance, the piece bills itself as a defense against Republican charges that Obama is insufficiently supportive of Israel, and it goes on to list the many ways that Obama has not only been supportive of Israel, but actually more so than any previous president, including George W. Bush.

Of course "Saban" knows that Obama's "support" is actually disastrous for the true interests of Israel, not to mention of the United States itself--that's what makes it such a brilliant satire.

About Me

I am a professor (emeritus) of political science, currently holding the position of University Research Scholar, State University of New York at Buffalo. Since 1963 I have taught and written about U.S. foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both for professional journals (such as International Security, Security Studies, and Political Science Quarterly) and for the general reading public, such as Dissent, Tikkun, and (many years ago, as might be imagined), New Republic. I also write many lead foreign policy columns for the Sunday Viewpoints section of the Buffalo News, and I have recently been invited to become a regular blogger for the Huffington Post. Click here to view the Mission Statement.